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Bennett’s book on Trafalgar is fairly typical of such books. As a popular history book, it wisely starts with a couple chapters of background, including how naval combat worked in the Age of Sail, and after that he moves on to more direct backgroud, with one chapter dedicated to discussing the personalities and careers of the various commanding officers involved.

Bennett occasionally takes time out to present important dispatches; for instance, between chapters 6 and 7 he inserts Nelson’s (abridged) memorandum to his fleet as they crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of Villeneuve, and then gives an important paragraph of Villeneuve’s instructions as a comparison. Near the end, he gives Collingwood’s two main dispatches after the Battle of Trafalgar. I found the latter to be bit much, but it is certainly good to have them available in the book, which also quotes from a variety of sources throughout the main text.

For anyone familiar with the battle, all the main elements you expect are here, and told quite lucidly. This isn’t a book to discover new insights with, but that isn’t what’s needed for the intended audience. If you only know the highlights of the battle (spoiler: Nelson dies), this is a good telling of the entire battle. I would recommend Alan Shom’s Trafalgar: Countdown to Battle instead of this book, as it is more comprehensive than this, and Bennett doesn’t gain anything with his slightly tighter focus, though this is a shorter read.

My version of this book is no longer available (dead ASIN), but there is still a Kindle version with the same cover (and I believe, publisher) currently available. Hopefully, it’s a cleaned up copy of my version, which is already in fairly good shape, though there are some notable OCR goofs (one nonsense sentence becomes clearer if you substitute “15” for “is”, and a ‘go-gun’ ship is… startling). If the current version got another pass through edit, it should be in good shape.